Actress and acclaimed rapper Natalie Portman played up her
Cincinnati ties in a Wednesday appearance at the Obama campaign-sponsored
Women’s Summit at Union Terminal.

The Academy Award-winner said her mother graduated from
Walnut Hills High School and her grandfather — Art Stevens — grew Champion
Windows in Cincinnati after starting as a door-to-door salesman.

“Because of that, I see President Obama’s support of small
businesses as so crucial to our economy,” Portman said, adding that Obama has
cut taxes for small businesses 82 times since taking office.

Portman said the Republican Party and their presidential
ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan did not have the best interests of women at
heart. She pointed to attacks on the Affordable Care Act’s mandates that
insurers provide birth control to women and ensure preventative care such as
mammogram screenings for breast cancer is covered, as well a bill sponsored by
Ryan and embattled congressional candidate Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) that would
eliminate all abortion funding except for cases of “forcible rape.”

“We need to stand up for ourselves,” Portman told the packed
auditorium that was crowded with an audience of mostly women. “Our mothers and
our grandmothers made giant steps for us. We can’t go backwards. We need to go
forwards.”

An Ohio Romney rep said the campaign did not have a comment
on the Women’s Summit, but is hosting a “Women for Mitt” call night featuring
former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao in Kenwood on Thursday.

“Ohio women believe in the Romney-Ryan
path for America that will result in lower taxes, less spending, less
government and more economic growth,” said a release from Romney’s campaign.

The Obama event on Wednesday catered to
women, with Chapek telling the audience she knew how difficult it was for women
to get there with jobs and the challenge of getting their kids to school. She
framed women’s role in the election as a conversation.

“The conversation starts like this:
women, turns out, we’re not a constituency,” Chapek said. “Who knew? Apparently
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, because they don’t realize that women are actually a
majority in this country.”

She told the women gathered to have conversations with their
neighbors and friends and encourage them to volunteer at phone banks or
knocking on doors.

Strickland talked about the need to reconcile qualities
traditionally seen as masculine — like power — with those seen as feminine —
like love.

She also took the opportunity to riff on a statement made by
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who said political wives were heroes because while they’re
husbands were on stage in the limelight, they were at home doing things like
laundry.

“I even did the laundry last night so I could come here
today,” Strickland said. “Even (former Gov.) Ted does the laundry.”

“I’m a celebrity photo enthusiast,” he said. “Nothing’s
official until I’ve taken a picture of it.”

Boston said he didn’t vote in 2008, but felt the upcoming
November election was too important to sit out. He said he was leaning toward
voting for Obama and liked his health care overhaul, but was opposed to the
president’s views on gay marriage for religious reasons.

Gwen McFarlin, who works in health care administration, said
she was there to support President Obama. She supports his health care overhaul,
but thinks it’s a first step to further changes.

She said she was encouraged by the diversity of the women in
attendance.

“For me, I’m sure the women who are here represent all
the world, not one issue,” she said. “We’re here as a group of women working to
empower all the U.S. and the world.”

Census shows poverty on the rise in Cincinnati

The 2012 rate represents a roughly
10-percent increase in the city’schild poverty rate in the past two years. In 2010, 48
percent of Cincinnatians younger than 18 were considered impoverished;
in 2012, the rate was 53.1 percent.

If the number was reduced back down to 2010 levels, approximately 4,500 Cincinnati children would be pulled out of poverty.

Overall poverty similarly increased in Cincinnati from 30.6 percent in 2010 to 34.1 percent in 2012.

Black residents were hit hardest with 46.4 percent classified as in poverty in 2012, up from 40.8 percent in 2010. Meanwhile,
the poverty rate among white residents went from 19.8 percent in 2010 to
22.9 percent in 2012.

Hispanics of any race were placed at a poverty rate of 51
percent in 2012, but that number had an extraordinary margin of error of
15.5 percent, which means the actual poverty rate for Hispanics could
be up to 15.5 percent higher or lower than the survey’s estimate. In
2010, 42 percent of Hispanics were classified as impoverished, but that
number had an even larger margin of error of 17.9 percent.

The other local numbers had margins of error ranging from 2.2 percent to 4.9 percent.

The child poverty rates for Cincinnati were more than double Ohio’s numbers. Nearly one in four Ohio
children are in poverty, putting the state at No. 33 worst among 50 states for child
poverty, according to the Children’s Defense Fund of Ohio.

In 2012, the U.S. government put the federal poverty level for a family of four at an annual income of $23,050.

Some groups are using the numbers to make the case for new policies.

“Too many Ohioans are getting stuck at the lowest rung of
the income ladder and kids are paying the price,” said Hannah Halbert,
workforce researcher for left-leaning think tank Policy Matters Ohio, in
a statement. “Policymakers — at both the state and federal levels — are
making a clear choice to not invest in workers, families or kids. This
approach is not moving our families forward.”

The federal government temporarily increased aid to
low-income Americans through the federal stimulus package in 2009, but
some of that extra funding already expired or is set to expire later in
the year. The food stamp program’s cuts in particular could hit 1.8 million Ohioans, according to an Aug. 2 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

New water infrastructure seeks to be cheaper, more sustainable

As cities rush to solve major problems with water
infrastructure, newer technologies are being touted by city agencies as
cheaper, cleaner solutions. In two different local projects, the
Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati (MSD) and a City
Council task force are looking into green ways to solve the city’s water
needs.

On Wednesday, CityBeat covered some of the benefits and downsides
of green water infrastructure. According to the report reviewed
Wednesday, green water infrastructure is cheaper and does create a boon
of jobs, but it faces some funding and education problems. However, it
was unclear how the green ideas would translate into Cincinnati.

Tony Parrott, executive director of MSD, says despite the
challenges, green infrastructure is clearly the cheaper option. The
organization is partnering with local organizations to adopt a series of
new projects — among them, green roofs, rain gardens, wetlands — to meet a new
federal mandate that requires MSD to reduce the amount of sewer overflow
that makes it into local rivers and streams.

“That is a very costly mandate,” he says. “Our belief is
that green infrastructure and sustainable infrastructure will allow us
to achieve a lot of those objectives a lot cheaper than your
conventional deep tunnel systems or other gray type of infrastructure.”

Of course, conventional — or “gray” — infrastructure still
has its place, but adopting a hybrid of green and gray infrastructure
or just green infrastructure in some areas was found to be cheaper in
MSD analyses, according to Parrott.

Plans are already being executed. On top of the smaller
projects that slow the flow of storm water into sewer systems, MSD is
also taking what Parrott calls a “large-scale approach to resurrect or
daylight former streams and creeks that were buried over 150 years ago.”
This approach will rely on the new waterways to redirect storm water so
it doesn’t threaten to flood sewers and cause sewer overflow, Parrott
says.

The programs are being approached in a “holistic way,”
according to Parrott. MSD intends to refine and reiterate on what works
as the programs develop. However, that comes with challenges when
setting goals and asking for funding.

“We think that if you’re going to use a more integrated
approach, it may require us to ask for more time to get some of these
projects done and in the ground and then see how effective they are,”
Parrott says.

If it all plays out, the ongoing maintenance required by
the green approach could be good for the local economy, according to
Parrott: “With the green and sustainable infrastructure, you’re creating
a new class of what we call green jobs for maintenance. The majority of
those jobs are something local folks can do as opposed to the
conventional process.” Additionally, the green jobs also tend to benefit
“disadvantaged communities” more than conventional jobs, according to
Parrott.

The argument is essentially what Jeremy Hays, chief strategist for state and local initiatives at Green For All, told CityBeat
on Wednesday. Since the green jobs require less education and training,
they’re more accessible to “disadvantaged workers,” according to Hays:
“They require some training and some skills, but not four years’ worth
because it’s skills that you can get at a community college or even on
the job.”

While MSD fully encourages the use of rain barrels,
recycling will not be a top priority for MSD’s programs. Instead, that
priority goes to the Rainwater Harvesting Task Force, a City Council
task force intended to find ways to reform the city’s plumbing code to
make harvesting and recycling rainwater a possibility.

Bob Knight, a member of the task force, says there is
already a model in place the city can use. The task force is looking
into adopting the International Green Construction Code (IGCC) in
Cincinnati. The code will “prescriptively tell” architects and engineers
how to design a rainwater harvesting system. In other words, IGCC would
set a standard for the city.

Deciding on this code was not without challenges. At
first, the task force wasn’t even sure if it could dictate how rainwater
is harvested and recycled. The first question Knight had to ask was,
“Who has that authority?” What it found is a mix of local agencies —
Greater Cincinnati Water Works, MSD and Cincinnati Department of
Planning — will all have to work together to implement the city’s new
code.

The task force hopes to give its findings to Quality of
Life Committee, which is led by Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls, by the end of
November.

Local state senator proposes bill to limit payments to illegal immigrants

An Ohio policy research group is taking offense to a local
state senator’s “anti-immigrant bill.” If passed, S.B. 323, proposed in
April by Ohio Sen. Bill Seitz, would require workers to prove their
legal status to work before receiving workers’ compensation, but
Innovation Ohio says the bill reaches too far to solve a problem that
might not even exist.

The bill was the topic of discussion at a Senate
Insurance, Commerce and Labor Committee hearing on Nov. 27. At the
hearing, supporters argued the bill would stop compensating illegal
workers who aren’t supposed to be in Ohio to begin with. But opponents
argue that the details in the bill add too many extra problems.

In fact, the bill might be going after a problem that
doesn’t even exist. At an earlier hearing, Seitz, a Republican, said the state does not
collect data on the immigration status of workers receiving
compensation. To Brian Hoffman of Innovation Ohio, this means there’s no
way to know if the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) has ever
compensated a single undocumented worker. “It just seems curious that
this bill is being introduced and has gotten three hearings when there’s
no proof that it’s actually even an issue,” he says.

Hoffman is also worried that the bill is imposing a new
regulatory burden on BWC without providing additional funds. In his
view, the state agency is essentially being told to do more without
additional resources to prepare or train regulators. Considering how
complicated the immigration issue can get, this makes Hoffman doubt the
agency will be able to properly carry out the new regulations.

From a broader perspective, the bill imposes regulatory hurdles on all injured workers just so they can get compensation they're entitled to under state law. “Talk about kicking someone when they’re down,” Hoffman says.

But the burden could hit Hispanics even harder and lead to
more discrimination in the workplace. After all, when employers are
clearing legal statuses, who are they more likely to question, someone with a
name like “Dexter Morgan” or someone with a name like “Angel Batista”?

In Hoffman’s view, the state should leave immigration
issues to the federal government and worry about more pressing issues:
“Why is the state legislature even wasting its time on the issue? There
are plenty of really good ideas to bring jobs back to Ohio. Why aren’t
they focused on those?”

The bill is still in committee, but it’s been the subject
of multiple hearings. It’s unlikely the Ohio Senate will take it up in
what’s left of the lame-duck session, but it could come back in the next
year.

CityBeat was unable to reach Seitz for comment
despite repeated attempts through phone and email, in addition to a scheduled
interview that was canceled. This story will be updated if comment becomes available.

Governor not pursuing waiver for restrictions as economy supposedly recovers

Gov. John Kasich’s refusal to seek another waiver for federal regulations on food stamps will force 18,000 current recipients in Hamilton County to meet work requirements if they want the benefits to continue.

Under federal law, “able-bodied” childless adults receiving food
stamps are required to work or attend work training for 20 hours a week.
But when the Great Recession began, the federal government handed out
waivers to all states, including Ohio, so they could provide food
assistance without placing burdens on under- and unemployed populations.

Kasich isn’t asking for a renewal of that waiver, which means
134,000 Ohioans in most Ohio counties, including 18,000 in Hamilton
County, will have to meet the 20-hours-per-week work requirement to get
their $200 a month in food aid starting in January, after recipients go through a three-month limit on benefits for those not meeting the work requirements.

The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services explained earlier in September that the waiver is no longer necessary in all but 16 counties because Ohio’s economy is now recovering from the Great Recession. Two weeks later, the August jobs report put Ohio’s unemployment rate at a one-year high of 7.3 percent after the state only added 0.6 percent more jobs between August 2012 and August this year.

At the same time, the federal government appears ready to allow stimulus funding for food stamp programs to expire in November. The extra money was adopted
in the onset of the Great Recession to provide increased aid to those hit
hardest by the economic downturn.

That means 18,000 food stamp recipients in Hamilton County
will have to meet a 20-hour-per-week work requirements to receive $189
per month — $11 less than current levels — for food aid starting in
November. Assuming three meals a day, that adds up to slightly more
than $2 per meal.

The $11 loss might not seem like much, but Tim McCartney,
chief operating officer at the Hamilton County Department of Job and
Family Services (HCDJFS), says it adds up for no- and low-income individuals.

“Food assistance at the federal level is called SNAP,
which is Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It’s not designed to
be the entire food budget for yourself or your family. It’s designed to
be a supplement. So anything you lose to a supplement, you obviously
didn’t have enough in the first place,” McCartney says.

HCDJFS already helps some recipients of other welfare
programs meet work requirements through local partnerships. But to avoid
further straining those partners with a rush of 18,000 new
job-searchers, the county agency is also allowing food stamp recipients
to set up their own job and job training opportunities with other local
organizations, including neighborhood groups, churches and community
centers.

McCartney says he’s also advising people to pursue job opportunities at Cincinnati’s SuperJobs Center,
which attempts to link those looking for work with employers. McCartney
says the center has plenty of job openings, but many people are unaware
of the opportunities.

“This population sometimes has additional barriers with
previous convictions or drug and mental health issues that would
eventually exempt them, but for others, there are plenty of
opportunities right now that we’d like to connect them with,” he says.

Conservatives, especially Republicans, argue the work
requirements are necessary to ensure people don’t take advantage of the
welfare system to gain easy benefits. But progressives are concerned the
restrictions will unfairly hurt the poorest Ohioans and the economy.

At the federal level, Republican legislators, including
local Reps. Steve Chabot and Brad Wenstrup, are seeking further cuts to the food stamp program through H.R. 3102, which would slash
$39 billion over 10 years from the program. Part of the savings in the
bill come from stopping states from obtaining waivers on work
requirements.

Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio
Association of Foodbanks, decried the bill in a statement: “Congress
shouldn’t be turning to Ohio’s poorest people to find savings —
especially children and others who are unable to work for their own
food. The proposal the Ohio members of Congress supported is immoral,
and our lawmakers must work together to represent all their
constituents. No one should be in the business of causing hunger, yet
that’s the choice the Ohio members of Congress made today.”

The legislation is unlikely to make it through the U.S. Senate, but President Barack Obama promised to veto the bill if it comes to his desk.

Correction: This story previously said the restrictions start removing “able-bodied” childless adults from the rolls in October instead of January.

A new report has some sobering notes for Cincinnatians.
Overall, the city ranked No. 10 out of 12 similar cities in the report’s
rankings, with the city doing well in housing opportunities and job growth but not so well in
other categories. The No. 10 spot is the same rank Cincinnati held in
the 2010 report.

The report, which was put together by Agenda 360 and
Vision 2015, compares Cincinnati to other cities in a series of economic
indicators. The cities compared were Cincinnati; Austin, Texas;
Charlotte, N.C.; Cleveland; Columbus; Denver; Indianapolis, Ind.;
Minneapolis, Minn.; Pittsburgh; Raleigh, N.C.; and St. Louis.

First, the good news: Cincinnati has an unemployment rate
lower than the national average, at 7.2 percent. As far as job growth,
total jobs, per-person income and average annual wage goes, Cincinnati
ranked No. 6. Cincinnati was also No. 5 in poverty ranks — meaning the
city had the fifth least people below 200 percent of the federal poverty
level among the 12 cities measured.For the most part, Cincinnati moved up in these ranks since 2010.

When it comes
to housing opportunities, Cincinnati claimed the No. 2 spot, only losing to
Indianapolis. That was a bump up from the No. 3 spot in 2010.

The bad news: Cincinnati didn’t do well in almost
every other category. In terms of educational attainment — meaning the
percent of the population 25 years or older who have a bachelor’s
degree or higher — Cincinnati was No. 9, with 29.3 percent having a bachelor's degree or higher in 2010. That was a slight improvement from the No. 10 rank in the previous report, which found 28.5 percent had a bachelor's degree or higher in 2009.

Cincinnati did poorly in net migration as well. The city was
No. 10 in that category, only beating out St. Louis and Cleveland. The
silver lining is the city actually gained 1,861 people in 2009 — an
improvement from losing 1,526 people in 2008.

Cincinnati also seems to have an age problem. The city
tied with Pittsburgh for the No. 10 spot with only 60.2 percent of the 2011 population made up of people between the ages of 20 and 64. The report also says the
city has too many old people, an age group that tends to work less, provide less tax revenue and use more government and health services. Cincinnati ranked No. 8 in terms of “Old Age
Dependency,” with 20.4 percent of the city made up of people aged 65 and
older in 2011.

However, the report does have a positive note through all
the numbers: “In fact, our current pace of growth, especially in the
people indicators, exceeds many of our competitors and if this pace
continues, our rank could be much improved by our next report.”

Ohio’s median income dropped last year, according to a new
report from the U.S. Census Bureau. But rates of poverty and uninsured
rates remained the same. Nationwide, uninsured rates dropped from 16.3
percent in 2010 to 15.7 percent in 2011, meaning 1.4 million people
gained health coverage. Some of that is attributable to health-care reform passed by President Barack Obama.

Former University of Cincinnati President Greg Williams is
getting a pretty nice going-away present. The Board of Trustees approved
a package for Williams that adds up to more than $1.2 million. It
includes a bonus, retirement benefits, consulting fees, a year’s salary
and a contract buyout. Williams abruptly left UC on Aug. 21, citing
personal reasons.

With the support of Democrats and Republicans, the Ohio
legislature approved pension reforms yesterday. The reforms lower benefits, raise
contributions requirements, increase the retirement eligibility age, establish new cost-of-living guidelines and set a new
formula to calculate benefits, all for future retirees. For the most part, current retirees are
not affected. Senate President Tom Niehaus, a Republican, said, “We know
the changes are not popular, but they are necessary.” Before the
changes, the system was losing $1 million a day, according to a
statement from Rep. Robert Hagan, a Democrat.

Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio is pushing against banks that
take advantage of college students. In a letter to Higher One, Brown
told the bank to rework its contracts with universities. Brown wrote in
the letter, “Federal student aid programs should help students prepare
for the future, not extract fee income from them.” He went on to ask the
bank to redo its contracts so they are “consumer-friendly and
consistent with reforms that Congress enacted for the credit card
market.”

Vice President Joe Biden was in Dayton yesterday. During his speech, he spoke about the attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya, which led to the death of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. Biden vowed justice will be served.

State senator gives proposal another shot in Ohio

State Sen. Tim Schaffer (R-Lancaster) is introducing
legislation Thursday that would attach mandatory drug testing to welfare
benefits, even though similar policies have proven to be costly with
little gain in other states.

“It is time that we recognize that many families are
trying to survive in drug-induced poverty, and we have an obligation to
make sure taxpayer money is not being used to support drug dealers,”
Schaffer told The Columbus Dispatch. “We can no longer turn a blind eye to this problem.”

Under the proposal, welfare recipients in three counties
would be required to take a drug test if they admit in a questionnaire
to using drugs in the past six months. Children, who make up a bulk of
welfare recipients, would be exempt. (In June, 24,443 adults and 105,822
children obtained welfare benefits in Ohio, according to data from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.)

The policy, which was originally touted as a way to reduce
welfare costs, has backfired in many states. That’s why the supporting
line is now about preventing dollars from going to drug dealers instead
of cost savings.

Deseret News
reports the latest problems in Utah: “Utah has spent more than $30,000
to screen welfare applicants for drug use since a new law went into
effect a year ago, but only 12 people have tested positive, state
figures show.”

When Ohio legislators in 2012 proposed a drug testing requirement for welfare benefits, CityBeatreported another failure in Florida originally covered by The Miami Herald:
In that state, the program had a net loss of $45,780 after it
reimbursed falsely accused welfare recipients for their drug tests. Only
108 people out of the 4,086 accused, or 2.9 percent, tested positive,
and most tested positive for marijuana.

A court placed an injunction on the Florida program after
the American Civil Liberties Union sued on September 2011. That injunction
was upheld on Feb. 26 by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in
Atlanta, which concluded,
“The simple fact of seeking public assistance does not deprive a TANF
(welfare) applicant of the same constitutional protection from
unreasonable searches that all other citizens enjoy.”

Given that Schaffer’s bill would require drug testing only
after information is solicited through questionnaires, it’s unclear
whether legal challenges like the one in Florida would be successful in
Ohio.

Federal grants tied to streetcar, transit projects

The MLK/I-71 Interchange project is supposed to be funded through the city’s parking plan, but mayoral candidate John Cranley, who opposes the parking plan and streetcar, says the city should instead use federal funding that was originally intended for the streetcar project.

Between 2010 and 2011, the streetcar project was awarded about $40 million in federal grants — nearly $25 million through
the Urban Circulator Grant, $4 million through the Congestion Mitigation
and Air Quality (CMAQ) Grant and nearly $11 million through TIGER 3.

The grants are highly competitive and allocated to certain
projects. In the case of Cincinnati, the grants were specifically
awarded to the streetcar after it was thoroughly vetted as a transit, not highway, project.

The CMAQ Grant’s main goal is to fund projects that
curtail congestion and pollution, with an emphasis on transit projects,
according to the Federal Highway Administration.
The website explains, “Eligible activities include transit
improvements, travel demand management strategies, traffic flow
improvements and public fleet conversions to cleaner fuels, among
others.”

The DOT website says TIGER 3 money could go to a highway project,
but one of the program’s goals is promoting “livability,” which is
defined as, “Fostering livable communities through place-based policies
and investments that increase transportation choices and access to
transportation services for people in communities across the United
States.” TIGER 3 is also described as highly competitive by the DOT, so only a few programs get a chance at the money.

When asked about the grants’ limitations, Cranley said, “I
believe … the speaker of the house, the senator, the congressman, the
governor and the mayor could petition and get that changed. Just because
that may have been the way they set the grants in the first place
doesn’t mean they can’t change it.”

The parking plan would lease Cincinnati’s parking assets to the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority and allocate a portion of the raised funds — $20 million — to the MLK/I-71 Interchange project, but the plan is currently being held up by a lawsuit seeking to enable a referendum.

The streetcar is one of the few issues in which Cranley
and Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls, a streetcar supporter who is also running for mayor, are in stark contrast (“Back on the Ballot,” issue of Jan. 23).

Cranley’s opponents recently accused him of originally
supporting the streetcar when he was a council member through two 2008 City
Council motions, but Cranley says those motions,
which he co-sponsored, only asked the city administration to study the
merits of a streetcar plan, not approve of it. Cranley voted no on the
first streetcar resolution in October 2007 and the motion to actually
build the streetcar in April 2008.

“I’ve never said that I’m against the (streetcar) concept
in all circumstances,” Cranley says. “I wanted to know if there was a
way that they could pay for it in a way that wouldn’t take away from
what I thought were more important priorities.”

Annual conference promotes sustainable urban water programs

Ohioans might not
give it much thought outside of paying the water bill, but better water
infrastructure can make cities more efficient, healthier and cleaner.
That’s why Green For All, a group that promotes clean energy
initiatives, is now focusing on cleaner, greener water infrastructure.

A little-known green conference took place in
Cincinnati Oct. 15-17. The Urban Water Sustainability Leadership Conference was in
town on those three days, and it brought together leaders from around
the U.S. to discuss sustainable water programs for cities. The
conference mostly focused on policy ideas, success stories and
challenges faced by modern water infrastructure.

For Green For All, attending the conference was about
establishing one key element that isn’t often associated with water and
sewer systems: jobs. Jeremy Hays, chief strategist for state and local
initiatives at Green For All, says this was the focus for his
organization.

Hays says it’s important for groups promoting better water
infrastructure to include the jobs aspect of the equation. To Hays,
while it’s certainly important for cities to establish cleaner and more
efficient initiatives, it’s also important to get people back to work.
He worries this side of water infrastructure policies are “often left
out.”

He points to a report released by Green For All during
last year’s conference. The report looked at how investing the $188.4
billion suggested by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to manage
rainwater and preserve water quality in the U.S. would translate into
economic development and jobs: “We find that an investment of $188.4
billion spread equally over the next five years would generate $265.6
billion in economic activity and create close to 1.9 million jobs.”

To accomplish that robust growth and job development, the
report claims infrastructure would have to mimic “natural solutions.” It
would focus on green roofs, which are rooftop areas with planted
vegetation; urban tree planting; rain gardens, which are areas that use
vegetation to reduce storm water runoff; bioswales, which are shallow,
vegetated depressions that catch rainwater and redirect it; constructed
wetlands; permeable pavements, which are special pavements that allow
water to pass through more easily; rainwater harvesting, which uses rain
barrels and other storage devices to collect and recycle rainwater; and
green alleys, which reduce paved or impervious surfaces with vegetation
that reduces storm water runoff.

The report says constructing and maintaining these sorts
of programs would produce massive growth, especially in comparison to
other programs already supported by presidential candidates and the
federal government: “Infrastructure investments create over 16 percent
more jobs dollar-for-dollar than a payroll tax holiday, nearly 40
percent more jobs than an across-the-board tax cut, and over five times
as many jobs as temporary business tax cuts.”

Hays says the jobs created also don’t have barriers that
keep them inaccessible to what he calls “disadvantaged workers”: “A lot
of these jobs that we’re focused on in infrastructure, especially green
infrastructure, are much more accessible. They require some training and
some skills, but not four years’ worth because it’s skills that you can
get at a community college or even on the job.”

Beyond jobs, Green For All supports greener infrastructure
due to its health benefits. Hays cited heat waves as one example. He
says the extra plants and vegetation planted to support green
infrastructure can help absorb heat that’s typically contained by
cities.

Hays’ example has a lot of science to stand on. The extra
heating effect in cities, known as the urban heat island effect, is
caused because cities have more buildings and pavements that absorb and
contain heat, more pollution that warms the air and fewer plants that
enable evaporation and transpiration through a process called
evapotranspiration. The EPA promotes green roofs in order to help combat
the urban heat island effect.

Hays says green infrastructure also creates cleaner air
because trees capture carbon dioxide and break it down to oxygen. The
work of the extra trees can also help reduce global warming, although
Hays cautions that the ultimate effect is probably “relatively small.”

But those are only some of the advantages Hays sees in
green infrastructure. He says green infrastructure is more resilient
against volatile weather events caused by global warming. With green
infrastructure, storm water can be managed by systems that collect and
actually utilize rainwater to harvest clean water. Even in a world
without climate change, that storm water management also reduces water
contamination by reducing sewer overflow caused by storm water floods,
according to Hays.

However, green infrastructure is not without its problems.
Hays acknowledges there are some problems with infrastructure systems
that require more year-over-year maintenance: “The green and
conventional approach is more cost effective over time, but the way you
have to spend money is different. So we need to look at the way we
finance infrastructure, and make sure we keep up with innovative
technologies.”

Specifically, green infrastructure relies less on big
capital investments and more on ongoing maintenance costs. Hays insists
the green infrastructure saves money in the long term with efficiency
and by making more use out of natural resources, and the Green For All
report supports his claim. But it is more difficult to get a city or
state legislator to support long-term funding than it is to get them to
support big capital expenditures, Hays says.

Education is also a problem. To a lot of people, the green
infrastructure on rooftops and other city areas might seem like “pocket
parks,” says Hays. But these areas are nothing
like parks; they are meant to absorb and collect rainwater. If the
public isn’t educated properly, there could be some confusion as to why
the supposed “pocket parks” are flooded so often. Providing that
education is going to be another big challenge for public officials
adopting green infrastructure, according to Hays.

So what, if anything, is Cincinnati doing to adopt these
technologies? In the past, city legislators have looked into rainwater
harvesting systems, but not much information is out there. On Thursday, CityBeat will talk to city officials to see how Cincinnati is moving forward.